Wiyot

The Wiyot language was traditionally spoken on the Pacific coast around Humboldt Bay, from Little River in the south to Bear River mountains in the north. In pre-contact times, there were about 1000 speakers (Kroeber 1925). Today, there are no first-language speakers (Golla 2011).

Wiyot belongs to the Algic language family, which also includes Yurok, spoken immediately to the north, as well as all the Algonquian languages (Cree, Ojibwe, and many others), which are spoken across central and eastern Canada and the northern United States from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic coast.